This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Chanie Wenjack.

Wenjack was 12 years old when he ran away from the Cecilia Jeffrey residential school in Kenora on Sunday, Oct. 16, 1966. A slight boy with thick, dark hair, Wenjack could not take one more second at the Presbyterian-run residential school.

He was trying to run home. But home was more than 600 kilometres northeast, and he travelled in the deceptive warmth of the mid-October sun, a time of year when in an instant, the weather can turn cold and grey. And it did. He never made it. Wenjack died of hunger and exposure on Oct. 22, 1966.

Singer Gord Downie announced a multimedia project, Secret Path, on Friday, a tribute to and sullen reminder of the thousands of kids who died at the schools.

“Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were,” Downie said in a statement released Friday from Ogoki Post, Wenjack’s home.

Article Continued Below

The boy’s flight remains a reminder of the thousands of indigenous children who never made it home from residential school – the policy of forced schooling of indigenous children in order to Christianize and assimilate them into white Canadian society. Nearly 150,000 children were taken from their families over 130 years and sent to nearly 140 church-run, federally funded schools across the country.

Wenjack ran from Cecilia Jeffrey with two of his buddies, the orphaned MacDonald brothers, Ralph, 13, and Jackie, 11, according to a story in Maclean’s, “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack,” published in 1967. (Chanie’s name had been Anglicized to Charlie at school.)

Wenjack planned was to follow the CN rail tracks until he could negotiate his way home to Ogoki Post, Marten Falls First Nation, a remote community on the shores of the Albany River, deep in the muskeg of the James Bay lowlands.

The boys made it all the way to Redditt, a town 31 km outside of Kenora, where the MacDonald brothers’ uncle lived.

This is where the friends parted. Wenjack set out alone, not dressed for the cold. He wore a thin jacket, a plaid shirt and pants. The coroner’s report into Wenjack’s death noted that, Wenjack had a few match sticks in a jar, given to him by the MacDonald boys’ aunt.

However strong Wenjack’s will was to make it home to see his dad and many siblings, his will was no match for the northern elements.

He made it 20 km east along the CN tracks outside of Redditt before he collapsed and died of “exposure to cold and wet,” read the official death certificate filled out by Kenora coroner Dr. Glenn Davidson.

The CN crew from train No. 821 saw his body lying on the tracks and called the Ontario Provincial Police, the coroner’s report said.

But no one thought to call Wenjack’s parents. They were not notified when he ran away or immediately told when he died.

Wenjack’s sister, Pearl Achneepineskum, said the family back in Marten Falls did not know that he was dead until the school principal arrived on a plane to tell them.

Last Thursday, Downie travelled to Ogoki Post to visit Achneepineskum and her family and to show her his multimedia project, which includes a graphic novel.

Downie visited Ogoki with Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler and Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. The centre serves as the permanent repository for records related to the residential school system and has pledged to donate the proceeds to it.

“Somebody said it is like another Terry Fox moment for Canada. Every once in a while, someone comes along and tells us what we need to do to make ourselves better as a nation. That is what Gord is doing,” said Fiddler, grand chief to the 49 First Nations that make up Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

Moran called the meeting an emotional moment. “I have worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission since the beginning. I heard from lots of survivors, but there is something so real about sitting down with Gord and seeing his offering. He said, ‘I hope you like this. I hope I made you proud’,” Moran said.

Downie is lead singer of The Tragically Hip and revealed in May that he suffers from an incurable form of brain cancer. Last month the band completed the emotional Man Machine Poem Canadian tour with a performance in their hometown of Kingston, Ont.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com